We take Dinner: Impossible's Robert Irvine out of the kitchen and turn up the heat, asking him a series of ridiculous questions.

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On Dinner: Impossible, chef Robert Irvine is presented with unfathomable assignments. He then completes them. (OK, so the title is kind of a misnomer.)

My mission: track Irvine down at a wine festival and ask the former military man with world-class knife skills inane questions tenuously linked to his life's work. Irvine can handle tests in heavily orchestrated reality, but can he handle the imagination of a nervous freelancer four glasses into a wine tour of southern Sicily?

First scenario: You're a contestant on Iron Chef. The secret ingredient is bean curd. The judges are Ted Nugent, John Rambo and an American black bear. How do you take down Bobby Flay?

How do you take down Bobby Flay? That's easy, because he doesn't use bean curd. [Laughs] Well, bean curd can be made in different ways: pies, stews, you can make sautés with it; you can make desserts with it. Sautéed and deep-fried bean curd with sugar and molasses is amazing. It's so adaptable. Are you asking me to put it into a dish that a meat eater would eat?

Yes, how would you impress a meat eater with the power of bean curd?

Well, I think bean curd would be pan-seared with chipotle lemon-pepper glaze, served with a red onion marmalade and a potato pie.

You're nailing it.

That was off the hook. That was pretty good. And that would taste good. You know why? Because when you pan-sear it and make it spicy, you add a sweet relish with the red onion marmalade -- and the potato pie has a very different texture. So you've got a soft and crunchy texture. So you've got it all encompassed there.

Scenario two: You're being sued by Bruce Geller, creator of Mission: Impossible, for copyright infringement. Your task is to create a meal so sumptuous that he drops the charges. What do you cook?

Well, first of all he can't sue Dinner: Impossible. The music is completely different. It's original music that we made ourselves. The show has got nothing to do with Mission: Impossible, because it's James Bond and MacGyver. But the meal I will prepare him would probably be a colossal crab salad with a mango horseradish sauce, followed by a blackened red snapper with creamy farmhouse grits, followed by a braised short rib with creamy celeriac and polenta mixed with truffle oil. Then I would serve him, for a dessert, something in the region of a frozen banana Foster in an egg wrapper served with a vanilla bean ice cream.

You're good at this.

I'm thinking of balance. You start slow. Colossal crab is very clean, and then go into a spicy, creamy grit with a red snapper. Then I go into the braised short rib, which is soft, creamy -- it's been braised in a great broth -- and the celeriac is almost like creamed cauliflower. So you've got very different textures and flavors, then something unusual to finish him off. You know, you leave people on the edge with a dessert that leaves them talking for the rest of life. When you take bananas Foster, which is a classic dish, and put it in a different form, which is in an egg wrapper, deep-fry it, roll it in cinnamon sugar, add the ice cream and a little raspberry sauce, he's gonna want me instead of Tom Cruise.

Scenario three: You go back in time to medieval England. Your task is to cook dinner for Edward the Confessor. The stakes: your life. Taking into account the culinary influence of his earlier exile in Normandy, create a cross-cultural menu that both satisfies his desire for fusion cuisine and saves your head.

Well, in them days, there was no fancy, foo-foo food. It was all big, bold flavors: grouse, sides of beef, haunches of venison. With his influence come crepes, apples. So I would say, it would be more likely a banquet-style feast. They would use, in them days, a nine- to twelve-inch dagger. There were no forks. It would be picked with a knife. And they would break the venison bones to eat the venison. So I would say, we would have the haunch of venison; we would have a suckling pig; we would have a lot of tubers, a lot of potatoes, root vegetables, carrots. We didn't have celery. Tomatoes, at that time, were supposed to be poisonous. We didn't have tomatoes. So I would say salads, lots of salads with ferns, definitely ferns involved. A lot acid, vinegars, citrus. The French influence would probably be all on the fruit side than anything else. Again, in that time period, desserts were not a big thing. But in France, even today, dessert far outweighs the food profile of main entrées. So I would say crepes, pancakes, sweet pancakes.

I think you saved yourself.

You have to understand, they never used to eat like this all the time. They would feast when guests came to the home. Food in that era was to show welcome. So, literally, they would parade through great halls with food on trays to present to the king before he and his guest would eat.

Time for the lightning round. I'll throw a character at you, and you name a meal, a sandwich you'd prepare, whatever. Robinson Crusoe.

Robinson Crusoe. Crab sandwich.

That's mean! The man's on a desert island. He's been eating seafood for forever.

OK. Hearts of palm salad.

Better. Refreshing.

Refreshing, available, island fruits, citrus, mangoes, coconuts.

Hannibal Lecter.

Hannibal Lecter. Chicken liver pâté.

Fair enough. Last one: Gandhi, pre- and post-hunger strike.

Gandhi. Soy bean chili.

That'll fill him up?

Fill him up, healthy, cleansing. Salmon for breakfast, lunch, and dinner -- pan-seared, light butter sauce. Salmon is a natural cleanser -- omega 3. Cleans your system out completely. You eight three ounces three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, nothing else except boiling water and lemon or some type of citrus, cleanses the system completely. Puts your body back into whack.

What about after the hunger strike? Maybe he just wants to cram a cheeseburger in his mouth.

He wouldn't cram a cheeseburger in his mouth. He would probably go for a warm lentil salad with a chicken paillard, which is basically warm lentils with tomatoes and onions, a little vinaigrette inside the pot. Served with that I would do the chicken that's been pounded out, pan-seared, a little bit of fresh thyme and parsley, butter. That's it.